Thirty years after his death, José Monje Cruz, Camarón de la Isla, remains a flamenco legend. His gaze, shy and penetrating, now returns to the streets of his hometown, San Fernando (Cádiz), as if still wondering what he sang, what he did to become an immortal myth.
When tomorrow, July 2, is the thirtieth anniversary of his death, his hometown wanted to recover his presence. And Camarón has made himself present through a giant mural of a photograph of Joaquín Hernández, Kiki, from which the cantaor looks into the eyes of everyone who looks at him.
The Jerez-born photographer Juan Carlos Toro has been in charge of converting that photograph taken in 1991, shortly before the blow of cancer appeared in his life, into a ten by ten meter installation, from which the singer can also contemplate the Centro Shrimp Interpretation of the Island.
In its first year of life, this museum that houses the legacy and traces the history of the singer who revolutionized flamenco and made it universal has received 50,000 visitors. And that in its first semester of opening there were still capacity restrictions.
“Many young people come, they really like to see their clothes, their things, they even ask for the foot size of their shoes,” explains a municipal source about the visitors to this center.
To celebrate this anniversary, the giant image of Camarón de la Isla that the Cadiz-born photographer Kiki took of him in his dressing room after a concert he gave in July 1991 in the Cadiz capital will now be temporarily added to the museum to celebrate this anniversary.
“Camarón was a somewhat shy man, he transformed on stage. He wasn’t very fond of photographers, he didn’t like to pose. That day they let me into the dressing room for five minutes, he was sitting with his wife and surrounded by his whole family and a lot of people. I began to ask him to look at me, but it was difficult for him. I insisted so much that he pierced me with his gaze, it was an instant, “recalls the photographer.
The photo now decorates a façade at the entrance to San Fernando, the same area through which 30 years ago the coffin of Camarón de la Isla, who died in Barcelona, ??entered the city on the shoulders of a crowd that took hours to carry it to the plenary hall, from where, the next day, he was taken to the cemetery for his mass burial.
Kiki was also there, and a selection of the images she took make up the “30 Years Without Shrimp” exhibition, which will open this month.
“That tour of the coffin was the moment in which Camarón went from being a great artist to being a legend, a myth, people wanted to accompany him with the fervor that is professed for a spiritual leader,” recalls Kiki.
Camarón’s presence on this anniversary will also be musical. Artists such as Carles Benavent (bass), Tino Di Geraldo (drums), Jorge Pardo (bass) and Rubem Dantas (percussion), mythical musicians who accompanied Camarón de la Isla on various live shows and recordings, will accompany Carmen Linares, Lole Montoya, Juan Carmona, Javier Ruibal, Pedro el Granaíno, La Mari de Chambao or the islander Jesús Castilla in the reinterpretation of their songs in a concert that will be held tomorrow, July 2, in the same area of ??San Fernando.
“Thirty years after his death, Camarón’s shadow is very long and will cover another 30 years, and another 300, because his legacy, his manners, his trade is all an apprenticeship,” Jorge Pardo, who At the age of 17, she met him in a recording studio in Madrid where the album “La Leyenda del Tiempo” was being “cooked”.
“I ended up recording on that album and then he began to invite me to his live concerts and some television recordings and his albums”, a time in which with him, and with Paco de Lucía, he discovered that instruments like the ones he plays, the flute and the saxophone could also form part of the flamenco repertoire.
“I discovered that there was a mine, a treasure”, assures Pardo, who believes that Camarón was “something more than the great singer who has gone down in history, he was a musician with a prodigious ear, although he was not academically cultivated”.
“What he has left in the fans is so strong that his legacy can only continue to grow,” he says.
